A case for classical music, old and new

“How often do we meet people who are otherwise cultured and educated, who have no awareness whatever of even the very existence of serious music? […] The first and most common abuse hurled at the likes of me is that an education towards an understanding of, and working with, serious Western classical music is ‘elitist’. Michael Billington, discussing this year’s Edinburgh Festival in the Guardian, wrote: ‘there is a strange reversal of values, particularly in the media. A concert or opera attended by 1,000 people or more is seen as ‘elitist’; a small-scale event attracting a dedicated handful is regarded as ‘popular” - ie, inverted snobbery at its most pungently destructive.” - story